Colonial America
1679-Dated Colonial Hingham, Massachusetts-Bay Manuscript Document Receipt for "Community rate Tax"
1679-Dated (Massachusetts-Bay Colony) Early Colonial Period, Manuscript Document Receipt for the "community rate for the tax," town of Hingham, Fine.
1679-Dated (Massachusetts-Bay Colony) original Manuscript Document Receipt for the town of Hingham; being a where John Lasell and Jacob Beale have paid the sum of the full "community rate for the tax year of 1677, the sum of 28 pounds... paid in full, July 30, 1679". This rare, early Colonial period tax document measures 2" x 8" and in well written in bold brown ink on laid period paper, a torn .5" wide piece of paper is lacking at lower right edge. It is in overall very nice condition for being such an early "Post-Pilgrim" period document. Indeed, there were still several of the original Pilgrims living a few towns over when this document was written. This receipt reads, in full:
"Rec(eived) of John Lasell and Jacob Beale in full of the Single tax in the year 1677 for the Town of Hingham ... rate Payment the form of twenty eight Pound one shill. one Penny no 475. July . 30 . 1679."
Hingham is known for its colonial history and location on Boston Harbor. The town of Hingham was dubbed "Bare Cove" by the first colonizing English in 1633, but two years later was incorporated as a town under the name "Hingham." The land on which Hingham was settled was deeded to the English by the Wampanoag Sachem Wompatuck in 1655. The town was within Suffolk County from its founding in 1643 until 1803, and Plymouth County from 1803 to the present. The eastern part of the town split off to become Cohasset in 1770.
Although the town was incorporated in 1635, the colonists didn't get around to negotiating purchase from the Wampanoag, the Native American Indian tribe in the region, until three decades later. On July 4, 1665, the tribe's Chief Sachem, Josiah Wompatuck, sold the township to Capt. Joshua Hobart (brother of Rev. Peter Hobart) and Ensign John Thaxter (father of Col. Samuel Thaxter), representatives of Hingham's colonial residents. Having occupied the land for 30 years, the Englishmen presumably felt entitled to a steep discount. The town was named for Hingham, a village in the English county of Norfolk, East Anglia, whence most of the first colonists came, including Abraham Lincoln's ancestor Samuel Lincoln (1622"1690), his first American ancestor, who came to Massachusetts in 1637. A statue of President Lincoln adorns the area adjacent to downtown Hingham Square.
The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who came to North America on the Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony in what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts, named after the final departure port of Plymouth, Devon. Their leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownists, or Separatist Puritans, who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands.
They held many of the same Puritan Calvinist religious beliefs but, unlike most other Puritans, they maintained that their congregations should separate from the English state church, which led to them being labeled Separatists (the word "Pilgrims" was not used to refer to them until several centuries later). After several years living in exile in Holland, they eventually determined to establish a new settlement in the New World and arranged with investors to fund them. They established Plymouth Colony in 1620, where they erected Congregationalist churches. The Pilgrims' story became a central theme in the history and culture of the United States